


Through a Glass, Brightly

by skieswideopen



Category: Fringe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, First Kiss, Friendship, Post-Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-16
Updated: 2013-06-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 03:45:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/844933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skieswideopen/pseuds/skieswideopen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes Olivia time to adjust to the changes in her life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through a Glass, Brightly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> Set post-season three, in an AU where Peter didn't disappear after creating the bridge. (There are passing references here to past Alternate Olivia/Peter and Alternate Olivia/Frank as they appear in canon.)
> 
> Thank you to colls for beta reading! All remaining mistakes are my own.

The sky was brightening toward dawn when Olivia finally stumbled home. She was numb with exhaustion, the initial rush of adrenaline long since burned away by hours of tense negotiations with the other side over information exchange and security protocols.  
   
A bridge. She was still a little awed by that. They had a bridge now. And with it, a chance at peace. Maybe even healing. Olivia wasn't sure what would happen in the long run, but it was proof that she had been right. That Peter had been right. If you looked hard enough, you could find another way.  
   
Right now, however, her main concerns were with food and bed. Possibly not in that order. She unlocked her door with a sigh of relief and stepped inside, then froze as she caught sight of a light in the living room. Hand on her gun, she took another step inside and surveyed her apartment, breathing a sigh of relief as she caught sight of Lincoln on the couch, Henry cradled in his arms. He half-turned toward her, careful not to disturb the baby, and offered her a sleepy smile. "Hey."  
   
Olivia returned his smile as she set gently down her keys and gun, and joined them on the couch.  
   
"Hey yourself," she said softly. She looked down at her son, snuggled contentedly against Lincoln's chest. "You're spoiling him."  
   
"It was the only way I could get him to sleep," Lincoln said. He didn't sound terribly apologetic.  
   
"I think you just like holding him." Olivia ran a gentle finger down Henry's cheek. "Captain Lincoln Lee, the Fringe Agent with the marshmallow core."  
   
Lincoln grinned. "Just don't tell Charlie that. He already has issues with calling me boss."  
   
"Charlie doesn't know how good he has it," Olivia said. "Just think how much worse it would be if he had to call _me_ boss." She leaned back against the couch, fighting the urge to close her eyes. "I thought you were taking Henry to my mother's."  
   
"I figured you'd want to see him when you got home."  
   
"What if I hadn't made it home?" It wasn't a possibility she'd let herself consider before--not really--but it struck her now. If Peter hadn't made the bridge, or if Secretary Bishop had been a little less lenient--or a little less distracted--  
   
"You're Liv," Lincoln said, interrupting her reverie. "Of course you made it home."  
   
***  
   
Olivia spent most of the next few weeks off-balance. Working with the other side was harder than she expected, now that she was being herself instead of pretending to be someone else. Working with _herself_ was harder than she expected. It was like looking in a funhouse mirror, staring access the table at her own face, knowing exactly how it felt from the inside to sit that way, to move that way, but all of a little off at the same time. Blonde hair instead of red. Business suits instead of military gear. And a reticence that Olivia had never really understood. They might look and sound the same, but the other Olivia was guarded in a way that Olivia was not and didn't fully understand. Olivia wasn't sure she'd ever seen her counterpart smile at anyone besides Peter.  
   
It was hard watching that smile. It was harder still watching Peter smile back, knowing that he'd once looked at her the same way and wishing in a small corner of her soul that he still did. Instead, he was rigidly formal in the face of her lighthearted teasing, maintaining an unrelenting distance between them, as if they'd never spent lazy mornings together reading the paper in bed, or stayed up late whispering secrets.  
   
"Are you going to tell him?" Lincoln asked one day, watching her watch Peter.  
   
Olivia looked away. "Tell him what?"  
   
"That he has a son."  
   
She'd thought about it, of course. Had been thinking about it steadily since Peter first established the bridge between the two worlds. On the one hand, Henry was his son. He had a right to know. On the other hand.... She turned back in time to see Peter's hand brush against the other Olivia's. "I don't know."  
   
Secretary Bishop would prefer she not say anything, she knew. He'd made that clear to her. The secretary still felt betrayed by Peter's decision to return to the other side, and he had no interest in encouraging similarly divided loyalties in his grandson.  
   
 _He can have other children,_ she told herself. He and the other Olivia could raise a family of their own. Have a dozen children if they want to. Henry was _hers_.  
   
Except that he wasn't, really. Not just hers.

"Yeah," she told Lincoln. She turned away from the Peter and the other Olivia to look straight on at Lincoln. "I'm going to tell him."  
   
***  
   
Lincoln was waiting for Olivia outside her door when she got back from the conversation with Peter. A smile tugged at her lips at the sight of him, sitting on the floor, arms wrapped around his knees like a little kid.  
   
"I could have sworn I gave you a key." A few days after Frank moved out, because she thought someone ought to have one, but she left that part off. She was still processing that particular loss, somewhere in between working and raising her son and dealing with her mirror-self and missing another man she couldn't have. If she thought too hard about any of it…. Mostly she tried not to think about it at all.  
   
Lincoln clambered to his feet. "I wasn't sure you'd want company."  
   
"Like I wouldn't just kick you out if I didn't," she said, waving him in. Truthfully, she was glad of the distraction. Anything to keep her from remembering the look of betrayal on Peter's face when she gave him the news.  
   
"How did he take it?" Lincoln asked.  
   
"About how you'd expect," she said. She leaned down to free Henry from his stroller. "He was a little confused about the timing." She handed the baby to Lincoln and headed to the kitchen in search of a clean bottle.  
   
"What? They don't kidnap people to accelerate their pregnancies over there?" Lincoln joked, following behind her. He leaned back against the door frame, rocking Henry to keep him from fussing. "So are you setting up some sort of visitation schedule?"  
  
"I told him he could come see Henry here."  
   
"Do you think he will?"  
   
"I think family's important to him." Neutral words that did no justice to the tenderness on Peter's face when he held his son. If Peter were a different, more ruthless man, she thought he might try to steal Henry and take him over there. Except, of course, that Peter knew what it was like to be raised by a mother who wasn't your own, in a universe that wasn't your home. One of their whispered secrets. She didn't think it was something he'd do to his own son, however much he might want him.  
   
"Cross-universe custody," Lincoln said. "Has to be a first."  
   
"Peter can visit his mother at the same time. It'll be fine." She handed the bottle to Lincoln, who shifted Henry to one side with practiced ease. It occurred to her that Lincoln had probably put in more time caring for Henry than anyone besides her and the nanny. Whatever Peter did or didn't do, Henry was never going to lack for male role models.  
   
***  
   
"So what's it like on the other side?" Lincoln asked, eyes steady on the building where they were expecting Mercer to show up.  
   
Olivia twisted her head, looking at him curiously. "What do you mean? You've been there."  
   
"Yeah, in one room. I caught a glimpse of sky through a window. You _lived_ there."  
   
"It's exactly the same," she said. "Except when it isn't." No amber. No lost cities. No people slow frozen for eternity. _Not their fault_ , she reminded herself. Not really. Walter's fault, maybe, but it wasn't fair to blame a whole universe for one man's sins. She wasn't even sure she could blame the man anymore. Not now that she knew him, knew the depth of his regret and the weight he still carried. She suspected the man who caused all those tragedies--who first opened that rift--didn't exist anymore in any meaningful sense. "There are a lot of little differences. Different movies. Different music. Different shows. Those are the kinds of things that tripped me up. The technology's different too. No airships. And they carry their phones in their pockets! Can you believe that?" She'd forgotten or misplaced hers at least a half-dozen times those first couple of days.  
   
Lincoln glanced at her, looking thoughtful. "It must have been hard, being there by yourself."  
   
"I wasn't totally by myself," she said, thinking of Newton. Of Peter. One man she'd been able to be honest with. One man she'd been able to trust. To a point. "I have to admit, though, there were days when I wished you and Charlie were there. Even alternate you and Charlie." Newton had given her files on both: the other Charlie dead at the hands of a shapeshifter, the other Lincoln an agent in the FBI, but with no connection to Fringe Division. She'd been tempted to look him up, one particularly lonely night, just for the sake of a familiar face. She hadn't, of course; the other Olivia would have had no reason to, and she was too disciplined to break her cover that way. Besides, what would she have said to him? _You remind me of someone I know..._ She wondered how similar their Lincoln was to her Lincoln. If the differences were large as those between the two Astrids, or if he'd have taken that line, cheesy as it was, and run with it, the way her Lincoln had once asked her out before they settled into easy friendship. "Undercover's always lonely."  
   
"Yeah, it is." His hand found hers, the lightest of squeezes. Reminder and reassurance. She wasn't alone. Not here.  
   
***  
   
"Are you really going to keep torturing him like this?" Charlie asked as he shoved paper plates into a giant trash bag.  
   
Olivia paused in the middle of collecting the cans that were scattered through her mother's backyard like red metal clover. It was amazing how much mess a child's first birthday party could generate. "What do you mean?"  
   
"I mean that he's been over to your place at least three times a week every week for the past year," Charlie said, nodding toward Lincoln, who was busy cleaning up a cake-covered Henry.  
   
"He's Henry's godfather. Of course he visits."  
   
Charlie snorted. "Yeah, that's totally why he's there." He reached down to pick up a icing-smeared plate, then straightened up. "You aren't still hung up on Frank, are you? Because you know, he's not--"  
   
"I know," she said. Actually, she hadn't given Frank more than a passing thought in months. She'd even managed to stop worrying every time she heard news of another medical epidemic, the kind she knew Frank would almost certainly be in the middle of.  
   
"It's not because of Peter, is it?"  
   
Olivia shook her head. Her relationship with Peter was no longer glacial--they'd managed a reasonably amiable conversation at the party before the Secretary pulled him away--but it certainly wasn't romantic.  
   
"So what's the problem?"  
   
"You haven't even been married a year and you've already decided the rest of us should pair off too?"  
   
"Oh, this isn't about me being married," Charlie said. "This is about me having to watch a certain someone mope for _years_ without being able to do anything about it."  
   
Olivia laughed. "I hate to break it to you, Charlie, but Lincoln's not really the moping type."  
   
"Sure he is. He just does it with a smile." Charlie gave her a searching look. "Are you really not into him, Liv? God knows you of all people don't have to settle, but I've been kind of getting the impression--"  
   
"That I want to jump my boss?"  
   
"You could transfer to another team," Charlie said reasonably, as if that were really the point.  
   
She gave him her best withering look. The one she'd practiced in a mirror.  
   
"Fine," he said, holding up a hand in surrender. "Have it your way."  
   
The truth was, if she hadn't been head-over-heels in love with Frank when Lincoln first asked her out, she probably would have said yes. But she was, and so she said no, and told herself that was the end of it. And if there was an underlying tension to her relationship with Lincoln that wasn't there with Charlie or Astrid or any of the other people she worked with, well, that happened sometimes. Sparks could be sublimated, attraction suppressed. She loved Frank.

And then everything changed all at once, turning her life upside-down, and she'd been too busy catching her breath to even think about a relationship. Until Charlie's talk.  
   
At work on Monday, they were halfway through the morning briefing when Olivia realized she had no idea what their new case was, but she now knew exactly what the grey of Lincoln's t-shirt did to his eyes. She spent the rest of the day fixated on him, committing to memory the way he stood and the texture of his voice and his expression when he was processing one of Astrid's reports.  
   
"It's all your fault," she told Charlie accusingly over post-work drinks.  
   
He laughed at her and stole a fry. "Just ask him out already. Or hell, invite him to stay over one night. It's not like you two haven't practically been dating for the past year anyway. You spend more time together than some married couples."  
   
She rolled her eyes at him and hid her shiver of anticipation at the idea of Lincoln staying over. It had been a long, celibate year. Just how long she was only just starting to realize now that her Henry-induced sleep deprivation was finally receding.  
   
She thought about it the next time Lincoln was there. And the time after that. Pictured his reaction: the startled, pleased expression, the feel of his lips, the way his hand would slide under her shirt. She took the images to bed with her each night, but hesitated each time she was tempted to speak. Normally she didn’t have a problem being direct with men she was interested in, but this...there was a lot to lose if something went wrong.  
   
"Are you okay?" Lincoln asked her one night. "You've been quiet lately."  
   
They were sitting side-by-side on her couch, reading, while Henry slumbered in his crib. _God, we really are an old married couple,_ she thought. Only without married-couple benefits.  
   
"Liv?" he said again.  
   
She was staring, she knew, and that was good, because it meant she saw the exact moment when his eyes widened in realization. His expression was everything she'd hoped for.  
   
She bathed in the light of his smile for a moment, mouth curving in a responding smile, then closed her eyes as she kissed him.


End file.
